Rational: As
children enter the upper grades, they are required to read and comprehend
more expository texts. Comprehension is one of the most important
essential aspects of reading. A great strategy or way for children
to learn comprehension is by using summarization. This lesson focuses
on helping students to learn to differentiate between the trivial information
in an expository text and the important information.

Procedures:1. "Today class, we are going to learn a strategy,
or a helpful hint, to help us with comprehension called summarization.
But first, let's review what comprehension means. Correct, comprehension
is understanding what we are reading and being able to recall the information
we read. Now, does anyone know what summarization is? When
we summarize, we choose or pick the most important concepts or details
of the passage we are reading and eliminate or ignore the less important
concepts."

2. "There are some steps you can follow when summarizing."
<(List on board for students' to refer back to.) >

a. Read one paragraph at a time.b. Note the important details from each paragraph.
Try to categorize each paragraph into one topic sentence.c. After reading the entire passage/article,
then summarize all the summary sentences by forming one-two sentences.
These one-two sentences will "sum" or categorize all the important information
together.

3. "Ok, now that we have an idea about our new strategy,
let's put it to use for comprehension."

4. <Give each student (or pair students) his/her
own article titled "Penguins on Parade" by Kristina L. Bailey. Ask
students to predict what the article will be about by simply reading the
title and by looking at the pictures. Then, question students to
get an insight to their prior knowledge of penguins. >

5. "Class, we are going to break this article
up into sections as we read to help us summarize better. Each section
will consist of one paragraph. Therefore, we will read one paragraph,
stop, discuss it, and finally, compose a one sentence summary of the most
important information gathered from that one paragraph."

6. "Everyone ready? Ok, we will do one paragraph
together for an example for you all to follow. As I read the paragraph,
you follow along with me reading silently to yourself. Does everyone
remember how to read silently? Yes, it's like reading in your mind
without saying one word out loud. Let's begin." <Read one
paragraph and then stop to discuss it. >

7. <Now ask students to raise their hands to
share what they thought was the most important key points or the main idea.
Write their key points on the board. Then, have students to form
one sentence by putting the key points together in sentence formation.
> "For example, let's read the second paragraph." <Read
out loud as students read silently. > My summary sentence would be
something like- "Little blue penguins are the smallest penguins of
all, and they got their name because of their shiny grayish-blue feathers.
Does everyone see how I combined and summarized the sentences in the paragraph?
Yes, I categorized the information into one good topic sentence."

8. "Now, I want you all to finish summarizing
the rest of the article. If you get stuck or confused, raise your
hand and I will help you. Once you are done, you should have around
nine total summary sentences."

9. Assessment:
"Once you have summarized the article, bring your paper to me to glance
over. After I have put a check on your paper, I want you to then
summarize your nine sentences into one-two sentences. You are summarizing
your summary sentences!!"

10. <Once everyone is finished, review and
point out helpful summarizing can be. > "Students, you all took a
whole article and made it into one-two sentences! Great work!